Talking with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: the full Q&A

MONTREAL - Wilco is releasing its new album, The Whole Love, on Sept. 27 on its own label, dBpm Records. The band will be previewing the new songs in Montreal on Sunday, Sept. 18 at Metropolis, 59 Ste. Catherine St. E. Tickets for the show cost $39.50; call 514-790-1245 or order at www.admission.com.

The Gazette’s Jordan Zivitz recently spoke to Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy (here's a link to that story). Here’s a transcript of the interview.

Gazette: I have to ask about this, because I’m a huge Rush nerd and the band became a bit of a running joke at your solo show here earlier this year: At the show, you mentioned almost meeting Neil Peart in Toronto. What happened there?

Jeff Tweedy: Well, he was scheduled to be on the George Popolopolopo-whatever-his-name-is show; they film a couple of them in one day, and so he was on the next show but he wasn’t there yet and I had to leave. There was no big deal, but it was pretty exciting and I was excited to get an autograph for Glenn (Kotche, Wilco’s drummer), because he’s a huge fan and the band itself overall is populated with pretty major Rush fans.

Gazette: I loved the bit of The Spirit of Radio that you plunked out at the show. I was hoping you were going to go all the way with that.

Tweedy: (Laughs) Yeah, I love Rush and I have a deep appreciation of them as people and as a band, more so now than when I was growing up, being a punk rock fan and there being a line in the sand at least at some point. And I heard it so much growing up around St. Louis – it was such a huge, huge thing that I was repelled by it. But I’ve always had a soft spot, maybe in a closeted kind of way, and I don’t have anything at this point in my life that I consider a guilty pleasure. I think that Rush has certainly earned their place, and I actually see a lot of similarities now in the way that they’ve existed … I mean, certainly we haven’t had the massive success that they’ve had, but there’s something really familiar to me about them. (Laughs) I just think that they’re nerds, and I feel like Wilco’s full of nerds, so I think that that’s probably the same thing.

Gazette: Have you always felt like that in Wilco? I think the general perception of you guys, maybe through the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot drama, is that you’re much more rebellious than nerdy.

Tweedy: (Laughs) Oh, nerds can be rebellious. It’s all about alienation, and I think that that’s a more appropriate term for it than rebelliousness. I think there’s just alienation, and I still feel fairly alienated. To be honest, I don’t see Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – the saga that has been so well publicized – as being a story of much rebellion. I see it as being a story of just doing what you’re supposed to do. I don’t think you’re supposed to change your record because somebody says the bottom line isn’t going to be favourable enough, you know? (Laughs)

Gazette: Would you still feel that way if tweaking Summerteeth like you were told to had paid off in a way that it didn’t? Would that maybe have made you more amenable to making changes to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot afterward when they came to you with similar requests?

Tweedy: Ah, that’s a pretty tough stretch for me. I knew that was never going to happen. (Laughs) When it was happening, I was pretty much sure that was never going to happen. Nobody ever really gave any indication that they were doing anything other than just f---ing with us, you know? There was never any serious interest, I don’t think. Let me put it this way: I don’t think there was ever anybody at Reprise Records that thought that Wilco was going to become a sensation. (Laughs) Like it was the goose that laid the golden eggs and we should put all our money in this basket here. That was not the case. But no, actually if it had somehow panned out where the hoops we jumped through turned into a massive hit record, I think I would have taken that opportunity to say, “Well, we have a massive hit record, so you can’t tell us what to do.” (Laughs) I think it would have gone the same way, actually.

Gazette: So were you ever tempted during that period to start your own label, like you’ve done now, or was it something that just wouldn’t have been viable for you until now?

Tweedy: It would have been an option at that point and time, but I don’t think we were really prepared for it, and I think the Internet being a part of how music is distributed wasn’t quite where it is now as well. In a way, we kind of did do that: we didn’t have a label, but we streamed our music and did what we’ve been doing for so long to take care of ourselves: touring. And I guess we could have done that indefinitely if nothing else had panned out. But I think from that point on, we worked hard at figuring out ways to be more and more self-sufficient and having a say, if not providing the services for ourselves that labels traditionally provide. And over time I felt like we were taking on so much of those responsibilities that when our deal ended with Nonesuch, it didn’t seem like there was any way that it was ever going to be fair to do another traditional record deal when the division of labour just didn’t work the way traditional record deals are usually structured. And we found a label, Anti, to collaborate with that was more than understanding about that traditional disparity not being something that’s going to work anymore. (Laughs) Not just for us, but maybe in general. There’s a label that understands that maybe a smaller piece of the pie is better than no piece of the pie. Because a lot of artists don’t really need a label presence as much anymore. They may need distribution, but even that is becoming less and less of an issue.

Gazette: I wanted to ask you about the way the album was recorded, because I know that at one point you were talking about a double record or two records released simultaneously. When it looked like that was going to be happening, did they each have their own identity, like when Springsteen did that not-very-good pair of albums in the early 1990s?

Tweedy: I don’t know if I’m that familiar with those records, but yeah, I think ours had very, very distinct personalities. It was maybe even schizophrenic – I don’t know if they sounded like they were from the same band. And I guess the irony of that is that most of the songs ended up on the same record. Really, it is a double record, if you think in terms of LPs – it’s going to be on two LPs. But yeah, one record was much more languid, sort of atmospheric country-folk songs and one record was a lot more exuberant – I call it obnoxious pop music, but when I say “obnoxious,” people think of Ke$ha or something. I mean obnoxious in the sense of the Seeds or the Sonics – a garage-band kind of obnoxiousness.

Gazette: Is that why you sampled the Stooges’ T.V. Eye for I Might?

Tweedy: (Laughs) No, that wasn’t an effort to tie it into that obnoxiousness – it was more that that lyric, every time I tried to sing it, that’s what I heard in my head. I wanted to be able to sing “brother” exactly the way Iggy Pop sang “brother” on T.V. Eye. And since I couldn’t do it, we called in the cavalry. (Laughs)

Gazette: On that song in particular, and Art of Almost and maybe a few others, it sounds like you were going for word association with the lyrics. Was that the case?

Tweedy: No, those songs and maybe a few others, the process is more like translation than any other process I could make an analogy for. I grunt and make noises and sounds that I think sound like what lyrics would sound like if I had any, and then I go and listen to them over and over and over and over again until it sounds like words, and then I write them down.

Gazette: So you’re basically transcribing grunts?

Tweedy: Yeah, basically. I try not to stand in the way too much – if I start thinking about meaning, it really derails the process.

Gazette: Regarding the other, more straightforward type of lyrics on the album: I guess you’ve been getting this question, but the parenthetical title of One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend) – are you willing to talk about how the song ties in with Jane Smiley’s boyfriend? Is he the condemning figure in the song, or maybe the condemned figure?

Tweedy: No, not at all. I do regret having that subtitle, to be honest, at this point, because it really doesn’t have much to do with … it has virtually nothing to do with Jane Smiley, but I do absolutely know her boyfriend as an acquaintance and as somebody who I enjoyed my time with, in particular one conversation we had. Mostly what I was getting at in the lyrics was to try and illustrate what I felt was poignant about that conversation, without getting into any specifics. But no, he’s not the condemning figure and he’s actually a very warm and generous-spirited guy. I really loved hanging out with him.

Gazette: Musically, it sounds like the instrumental section at the end of that song could have gone on for another 20 minutes without running out of steam. This sounds kind of stupid, but how do you know when a song is finished?

Tweedy: Well, on the LP, it goes on for another two minutes and then it ends. And I guess that’s just the musical intuition. (Laughs) On the CD, we rounded it off I guess because … I don’t know, just to make a roughly 60-minute CD, I guess. I can’t remember why we rounded it off on the CD. On the LP, we put another song on that side so that it wasn’t just a super-short side, and we let the song go another two minutes so that it’s more of a healthy LP side. I don’t know why we played the song so long to begin with. I had to write a bunch more lyrics to make it work. It just felt very hypnotic and beautiful, and the longer we played it, the more it felt like some spell was being cast, and that’s one of those moments you live for as a musician, to have everything disappear and be rooted in that moment. I just feel like I got to participate in something beautiful, and there it is. (Laughs)

Gazette: I guess not just that song, but with a lot of your songs I wonder how you know when to hang it up and move on. Like Art of Almost – the first time I heard it, it sounded so counterintuitively arranged until little bits started popping out every subsequent listen. Is that, or any other song on the album, one that you could have kept fiddling with infinitely?

Tweedy: I don’t know. I think you stay pretty open to what the shape of a song could be. Hopefully you’re going to be surprised and excited by what starts to emerge out of basically this raw material of chord progression and melody and lyrics. And I think if you’re not too married to steering the ship, if you just stay open to it, a really strong shape starts to emerge. And I guess in a band of six people, it’s kind of amazing that at some point we all start to see it. We all start to see simultaneously where this song is going and how it’s going to work. And then you just do your best to finish it – make it as good as it can be. But yeah, that song was like a collage or something. We worked on it off and on for several months. But I think fairly early on it took this shape that we just wanted to hone in on. I mean, I could use a really, really pretentious analogy, but I think it’s fitting: Inuit carvers pick up a piece of stone, and they start carving not knowing what animal is inside of it. And when they get to a certain point, it becomes obvious to them that, oh, they’re making a walrus, or this is a caribou or whatever. That’s kind of what I’m describing: you just get lost in the process, and eventually something starts to emerge. It’s like those Magic Eye posters. (Laughs)

Gazette: Has it always been that way with this lineup of the band, or on Sky Blue Sky or Wilco (The Album) were there times when all six of you were chipping away and one of you made a whale’s tail while another person was carving a unicorn’s horn?

Tweedy: I think all you have to do is listen to the records to know the answer to that question. (Laughs) There’s a fair amount of uni-whales in the Wilco catalogue. It doesn’t always work. But luckily there’s nothing really dangerous about making a bad song and putting it out into the world. It’s not going to kill anybody, and you’re certainly in good company: more people have made bad songs than good songs, and probably a lot of good people have made more bad songs than great songs.

Gazette: The thing that leaped out at me the most listening to The Whole Love was how much of Nels Cline’s guitar is on this album. Which really surprised me – not because I didn’t think he was capable of it, but because he was more restrained on the last two albums, especially Sky Blue Sky. Did he have to restrain himself on those earlier albums because those were the types of songs you were writing, or given his choice would he have been soloing all over the place?

Tweedy: No, that’s never Nels’s inclination. Nels’s inclination is almost always atmospheric, and a lot of things that he really enjoys doing are kind of like camouflaging the guitar, and being really sensitive to the song and being sympathetic to the chords. His inclination is not to shred, and a lot of times he has to be coaxed to shred. But I do think that somehow the balance that we achieved with this record was maybe the first time that the material and the process all lended itself to everybody really playing to their strengths. And that is maybe most audible in Nels’s contributions, but at the same time I can hear everybody’s personality and what everybody brought to each record maybe more than other people, because I was there. But yeah, I’m happy that people hear that, and I guess it’s “give people what they want” in this case. It wasn’t a conscious effort, but I do understand that that’s what a lot of people want to hear from Nels.

Gazette: Was it a case where it took seven years for this lineup to reach a point where everybody could play to their strengths in the studio? Did it take this long for everybody to feel each other out?

Tweedy: (Long pause) Yes and no. I’m not condemning any of the previous records that we’ve made together; I’m very proud of them. And I don’t agree with any of the common criticisms I’ve seen. I personally don’t get a lot of it …

Gazette: And that’s not what I was trying to hint at; I really like Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album).

Tweedy: But those records have taken a lot more hits than a lot of other Wilco records have. And that’s partially because the band has gotten bigger and more people weigh in – I don’t know, whatever reason. But what I was going to say is that there is something about being a band and playing so many shows together and having this longevity – you just waste a lot less time talking about things. Basically, musical intuition gets enhanced. That’s the only way I can describe it, is just a musical intuition you can’t force early on even if you are working and have chemistry together and you have a sympathetic arrangement musically. (Pause) And I think about the people who came into the band later – my assessment is that it maybe took a little bit longer for them to shed some of the inhibitions about what it is they’re joining, and not feel like they’re going to destroy some legacy or some crazy idea that this is something other than what they’re contributing to. Like they have to honour something. I guess there’s a healthy amount of irreverence, and maybe a certain amount of ownership – that this is just as much them as it is anybody else in Wilco – and maybe that’s what took time to get to and I think has finally been achieved on this record.

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